Business Matters: Social Newcomers Tumblr and Pinterest Each Beating MySpace in U.S.

--Facebook dominates U.S. social media. Well behind Facebook are two growing social networks you might not be aware of, Tumblr and Pinterest. They have fewer users than Twitter and even MySpace, but they command quite a bit of time.

Billboard has covered Tumblr numerous times but the picture-heavy social blog platform continues to be overshadowed by bigger names like Facebook and Twitter. Other social networks have more users but Tumblr ranks second only to Facebook in average time spent at the site.

Pinterest, a virtual pinboard that tracks users' interests, is a social platform worth watching. comScore puts Pinterest's U.S. unique visitors at 4.9 million for November. The site first got on comScore's radar in May 2011 with 418,000 unique U.S. visitors. What Pinterest lacks in visitors it makes up for in stickiness: visitors spent an average of 88.3 minutes at the site in November, third only to Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes).

The undisputed laggard in time spent per visitor is Google+ with a mere 5.1 minutes per U.S. unique visitor. That's less than half the time spent at MySpace (12.0 minutes), a third of time spent at LinkedIn (16.0 minutes) and almost one-fifth of the time spent at Twitter (24.4 minutes).

The truly revealing numbers - total time spent on each site - were left off comScore's report. Here's the horse race: After Facebook's 65.4 billion hours came Tumblr with 2.2 billion hours, Twitter with 865 million hours and LinkedIn with 560 million hours. Although Pinterest lags in number of users, its 429 million total hours were better than MySpace (300 million hours) and Google+ (78 million).

The MySpace numbers reveal the challenge facing Specific Media, which bought the social network from News Corp. in June 2011. MySpace has fallen from 54.3 million visitors a year earlier. Its 12 minutes per visitor per month -- equal to four, three-minute songs per person per month - shows people are stopping by but not hanging around. And that's not to say the average person is actually streaming four songs each month. While MySpace is making music - and now television -- central to its rebranding effort, the site is still very much a social network.

If MySpace wants to be a major player in digital music, it needs to the numbers of a major player. Vevo averaged 71.3 minutes per month for 55.4 million unique U.S. visitors in November, according to comScore. Cricket's Muve Music says its 500,000 listen to an average 40 hours per month (Cricket's figure is self-reported). Pandora streamed 5.5 billion listening hours in the first 10 months of 2010 to over 100 million registered users and 40 million active users. That works out to 2.3 hours per active user per month. ( comScore blog)

--Two Dutch ISPs were ordered by a court to block access to The Pirate Bay. The ruling is a victory for BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy trade group that represents entertainment companies in the country.As a result of the ruling, ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL, must block access to The Pirate Bay or risk a fine. The Pirate Bay was already under a court order to stop activities in the country, although the order had been ignored.

Although the devil will be in the details - some Pirate Bay users may still be able to find ways to access the site - the potential impact could be considerable. According to TorrentFreak, the court noted "that approximately 30% of Ziggo subscribers and 4.5% of XS4ALL subscribers use The Pirate Bay to share unauthorized media." ( Reuters, TorrentFreak)

--Myxer has surpassed 150,000 new users of its Internet streaming radio product, Myxer Social Radio, seven weeks since launch. Myxer Social Radio listeners to chat in real-time with their Facebook friends. It has rooms where groups can listen to songs, chat about them and rate them with a thumb up or thumb down. It launched in November 2011.

Myxer Social Radio is an offshoot of Myxer.com, a source for free downloadable mobile entertainment content. Over 51 million consumers have downloaded over 2.8 billion items from Myxer.com.

The last year has been a whirlwind of activity in Internet radio and radio-like services. Clear Channel re-launched iHeartRadio with a personalized radio function. Spotify beefed up its radio product and opened up its API so developers could create Spotify-powered radio apps like SpotON Radio (which is getting a lot of online buzz this week). Just this week Slacker announced the addition of live ESPN Radio broadcasts as well as content from The Weather Channel and American Public Media (producer of "Marketplace" and other public radio programs).

Myxer's entry into the Internet radio market was evidence there is room for new ideas and approaches. "Internet radio is no longer just an individual listening experience and with our social radio app, consumers are taking notice of the difference rapidly," said Myk Willis, Founder and CEO of Myxer, in a statement.